The G.I.'s who raised the American flag on Mount
Suribachi,
Iwo Jima,
(Col. D. M. Shoup, Lt. Col. H. P. Crowe, Capt.
Harold G. Schrier, Rene
A. Gagnon, Ira H. Hayes, and John H. Bradley) all
appear in cameos.
It's
an enormously popular flag-waver war story retelling
in heroic terms
the
WW11 seizure of a strategic Pacific island by US
marines, a film
Republic
Pictures cashed in on big-time at the box office.
According to the Los
Angeles Times the Marine Corps permitted the
producers to use the
actual
flag raised at Iwo Jima, usually housed at the
Marine Museum in
Quantico,
VA, in shooting that scene.

The training camp in the film was at the New
Zealand
military station
in 1943, but was filmed at Camp Pendleton,
California.

It's a film that is tailor-made for John Wayne,
who is a
hard-boiled
seasoned combat veteran, Sergeant Stryker, using
tough love to get the
marine recruits under him trained to do battle in
the Pacific. His way
is to not care who likes or hates him, as long as
they are properly
trained
to do their job and therefore will have a chance to
survive the
fighting.
The recruits leave the training camp with their
top-sergeant and go on
to fight first at the Battle of Tarawa then onto the
other Pacific
beachheads
where they become recognized as an efficient
fighting machine.

Wayne's perfect for the part, it might be the best
role he
ever had--at
least, the one I like to remember him the most for.
He was deservedly
nominated
for an Oscar. Though the gung-ho war story is filled
with
clichés
and stock characters seen in many other war films,
the film
nevertheless
had a certain passion and hypnotic quality that was
both entertaining
and
inspiring. The battle scenes were done with great
care and were
unforgettably
powerful. Director Allan Dwan also interestingly
mixed in quite
effectively
actual documentary combat footage. I saw the
black-and-white version on
cable, but there's a computer-colored version
available.

To give Wayne a human face, he's shown as a flawed
man but
a great
warrior. He's embittered because his wife recently
left him and took
away
his son. The sergeant is now pictured as married to
the military
forever.
That his harsh methods and bullying tactics are
questioned by the
recruits
who think he might have gone over the edge, but when
they get into
battle
the military knowledge he passed on is seen as
invaluable. One of the
rebellious
recruits is John Agar, the son of a former marine CO
of Wayne's. The
kid
didn't want to be a marine, but family tradition
dictates otherwise.
The
conflict between Wayne and Agar seems oedipal, as he
becomes his
surrogate
son and gets a lot of Wayne's attention.

The film knows just when to pull on your emotional
strings
and when
to let go. It's one of the better patriotic war
movies.